Did you know that the word ‘very’ is an almost meaningless adjective and/or adverb?

‘Very' is the most useless word in the English language and can always come out. More than useless, it is treacherous because it invariably weakens what it is intended to strengthen.’ – Florence King (an American novelist)

There is a plethora of words that would be better suited than a humdrum word like very.

So, this silly little word has originated from the Latin verus meaning ‘true’. Then Old French decided that it should be verai, where Middle English found it and coined the word very.

I know that we all use very; it comes naturally and we don’t even have to think about it. Please don’t be offended when I say that it’s simply laziness (I am guilty as well).

To complicate matters somewhat, it can be used as an adjective and an adverb. The next time that you want to compliment The CV Branch’s work, say, ‘This is the exact CV that I need.’. Doesn’t it sound better than ‘This is the very CV that I need.’? (Used as an adjective before a noun in this example.)

Now as an adverb, it can be used to indicate a high degree of something, in other words as an intensifier. Like this; ‘Your LinkedIn profile is very good.’. Uninspiring. Rather say, ‘Your LinkedIn profile is outstanding.’ Much better, don’t you think? Especially when The CV Branch has helped you to create a marvellous profile.

Use very to emphasize a superlative and an adjective. When you ‘want your résumé by Monday at the very latest’, it conveys the same message as, ‘My résumé should be completed by Monday.’. The message is the same if you think about it.

Instead of saying that ‘this is my very own cover letter’, tell employers that ‘it’s your personal cover letter’.

You can use very in the sense that it means ‘the same’. Compare these two sentences; ‘Sonia said the very same thing.’. I’d rather she said, ‘the exact same thing’.

But remember that you cannot use very with verbs.

There is a newspaper in the United Kingdom that uses very so indiscriminately that it’s almost painful. One would think that their journalists would know better. But on the other hand, news is so fluent that they probably don’t have the time to think of a better word. I’m sure that that’s their excuse, mind you.

I like to replace very with ‘so’. In the sense of ‘I’m so excited.’. But there is a case where I wouldn’t necessarily change very; in the sentence, ‘Very good, sir, will that be all?’ It expresses consent or agreement. What do you think?

Have a look at these replacement words:

very beautiful exquisite

very serious solemn

very good superb

very week feeble

very worried anxious

From now on, the only times that you’re allowed to use very, are in these examples;

Very; an album by the Pet Shop Boys,

the lunar crater called ‘Very’,

the Martian crater with the same name after Frank Washington Very, and

A hyphen (-) is that little horizontal line between words. In a quick nutshell, its primary uses are to join two words in order to show that they are grammatically linked or have a combined meaning, and to indicate the division of a word at the end of a line. But this article is about the-little-horizontal-line between words.

History

Let me start with Shakespeare, seeing as how I ‘misappropriated’ a line from Hamlet for my heading. William created the most unique compound words by inserting a hyphen, some of which have even crept into modern English. Consider ‘fancy-free’ and ‘lack-lustre’. Then there are the words he concocted around the word ‘knave’ (a naughty boy); ‘bacon-fed knaves’, ‘flap-ear’d knave’ and ‘malmsey-nose knave’. The reason for this trip down memory lane is to show you that the-little-horizontal-line-between-words has an illustrious history.

Unfortunately, it seems as if this history is soon coming to an end. The hyphen does not garner the respect it used to. Its name comes from the Greek, meaning ‘together’ or ‘in one’, which is exactly what it does; it joins two words together in order to create a new word. In the era we live in where ‘new’ is better, one would think a tool like this would be appreciated!

Reviled

Our little word has been used by important people in a rather derogatory fashion. Winston Churchill said that ‘One must regard the hyphen as a blemish to be avoided wherever possible.’ And it is believed that Woodrow Wilson called the hyphen ‘…the most un-American thing in the world.’ (We shall ignore the hyphen used in ‘un-American’.) That stalwart of dictionaries, Oxford, has dismissed our little line from thousands of words over the last few years.

Present

At least for now the hyphen still has a place. It has been admitted that it is able to avoid ambiguity. Look at this sentence: ‘The half-clothed man is walking down the street.’ We immediately understand that the guy is only wearing half his clothes. Then, alter the sentence like this: ‘The half clothed man is walking down the street.’ Oh dear, now it is only half a man, although fully clothed, that we have to watch! And so the examples can go on and on.

The future

By ‘the future’ of the hyphen, I mean the internet and technology. Allow me to list a few typical examples of hyphenated words we see every day:

call-to-action (CTA)

email; this word used to have a hyphen, e-mail. But it seems we have ‘progressed’.

social-networking; when used as an adjective

pay-per-click (PPC)

These are only a few cases, but it appears to me that the-little-horizontal-line-between-words is after all not quite ready to disappear…

‘This morning I deleted the hyphen from “hell-bound” and made it one word; this afternoon I redivided [sic] it and restored the hyphen.’ – Edwin Arlington Robinson

'The laws of Nature are written in the language of mathematics…the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word.' – Galileo Galilei

I can unequivocally say that yes, mathematics is indeed a language. In fact, it is only one language of many that are not the same as ‘plain English’, such as music. And as a language, it is far more unambiguous than English. But mathematics has its own typical, technical terminology, the same as most professions.

It is, however, much the same as learning a foreign language; it is not spoken in the home and is almost exclusively learnt at school. The basic mathematical concepts should be developed in much the same way as the rules and regulations of a spoken language. Good fundamental knowledge and understanding is the only manner in which to proceed. The way in which the structures and terminology of language is taught, mirrors those of mathematics – basic numbers, shapes, quantities, and the like. The teaching methodology of CRA (Concrete to Representative to Abstract) focuses on brain activity, where the child first learns to play with objects in order to apply those skills to mathematical language. It can be compared to the routine in which we learn a second language. If we don’t use the acquired language regularly, we won’t be able to sustain our fluency; the same with mathematics. We often learn only the basic facts, unable to apply the solutions.

The parts that make up a language

Vocabulary; consists of symbols and words

Grammar; how the vocabulary may be used

Syntax; the linear placements of vocabulary

Discourse or narrative; the sentences that are structured using the vocabulary

Community; those who understand the language

Meanings; the communication achieved by means of the vocabulary

Mathematical vocabulary

Signs and symbols must be decoded, requiring a certain skillset. They often present in the form of pictures. The benefit is of course that speakers of any language can understand them. Without mathematical notations, or symbols, the language loses its power. We are dealing with a visual language.

Examples:

= equality 2+3=5

≈ approximately equal √2≈1.41

ℝ real numbers π∈ℝ, 7∈ℝ, √(-1)∉ℝ

∝ proportional to f(x) ∝ g(x)

(a,b) open interval (a,b) = {x | a < x < b}

English language terms can mean something entirely different in mathematical language. Look at the following examples:

The surface of any sphere is equal to four times the greatest circle in it [S = 4∏r2]

– Archimedes, On the Sphere and the Cylinder, 220 BC

Mathematical grammar

Unlike natural language, mathematical language is understood by all mathematicians, regardless of their first language, hence the term; ‘a universal language’. The notations used for formulas function independently, despite the fact that some writing systems follow a right-to-left line, and not the Latin alphabet in which mathematics is written.

The following formula is understandable to native speakers of English, Russian, Arabic, and every possible language. Natural language phrases consist of parts of speech, as do mathematics, the formula below being an example.

sin x + a cos2x ≥ 0

This formula may be regarded as a sentence or sentential phrase in which the greater than or equal symbol acts as the verb.

In Mathematics as profession and vocation, in Mathematics: Frontiers and Perspectives,(V. Arnold et al, ed.), AMS, 200, p. 154, Yu. Manin said that ‘The basis of all human culture is language, and mathematics is a special kind of linguistic activity’.

Verbs

Schwartz & Kenney (1995) explains the ‘verbs’ of mathematics:

Inferring: to apply the gained results to the initial problem, and subsequently interpreting those results.

Modelling and formulating: to produce suitable descriptions and relationships so as to mathematize the original challenge.

Communicating: to report to a particular audience on the outcome of the problem.

Transforming and manipulating: to change the mathematical form of the original problem in order to convey corresponding forms.

'My own attitude, which I share with many of my colleagues, is simply that mathematics is a language. Like English, or Latin, or Chinese, there are certain concepts for which mathematics is particularly well suited: it would be as foolish to attempt to write a love poem in the language of mathematics as to prove theFundamental Theorem of Algebrausing the English language.'

– R.L.E. Schwarzenberger

History

Mathematical language has been evolving for the last 2,500 years. To mention one important contributor; René Descartes (1596–1650), the first mathematician to use letters at the end of the alphabet to indicate an unknown quantity. He introduced the power notations x2, x3.

Robert Recorde (c.1510–1558) invented the sign of equality, published in his book The Whetstone of Witte (London, 1557):

'I will sette as I doe often in worke use, a paire of paralleles, or Gemowe lines of one lengthe, thus: =, bicause noe.2. thynges, can be moare equalle.'

Everything I have read in my research for this article agrees: Mathematics is a Language.

Further reading

This book comes highly recommended:

Devlin, K. The Language of Mathematics: Making the Invisible Visible, Henry Holt and Company, 2000.

Thank you

There are two people I have to thank for their assistance with this article.

Mr George Pauer; a man curious about almost anything. His mathematical interest goes much deeper than this mere article. I thank my wonderful friend for reviewing my article.

Mr Floris Schoeman; a mathematics coach, amanuensis and mathematics genius. As a great supporter of The CV Branch, thank you for giving me the idea to write this article, and thank you for your explanation of how mathematical language learning and ‘normal’ language learning connect.

Mr Schoeman offers maths coaching with a difference. You may find him on:

The internet has presented different audiences and purposes for writing. It is now so much more interactive than paper.

In the book Working with Texts, Adrian Beard (ed.) says that:

'Keyboard symbols, themselves the basis of new art forms in the shape of emoticons, can take their place alongside sound files, video clips and animations where text can sing, dance and play.'

Online writers can now boast of being textual designers, creating a vibrant assortment of bricolage (tinkering about / odd jobs). When writing a blog for instance, readers are able to click on various links or sections, able to view new pages (permeable writing). An online writer’s work may be read by a mass audience, different to writing a book intended for publishing.

When we read online, we don’t necessarily read in a linear fashion. Reading non-linear, is not reading a text from the top to the bottom of a page, but only sections of a page.

'An immediate consequence [of the World Wide Web] for English was the emergence of a new range of language varieties, as people learned to adapt their language to cope with the linguistic constraints and opportunities provided by the new technology.' – The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language

Online languages are more expressive; providing opportunities for creative self-expression and interaction, with new scopes for presentation. And just as the printing press was viewed with grave suspicion, so is this (new) language deplored by linguistic purists. They have a point; visual communication is much stronger, causing literacy and linguistic skills to lag behind.

Writing has to be brief because the competition for attention is fierce. The message has to come across strong and quickly, leading to the occurrence of highly abbreviated customs and styles. There is also the emergence of text messaging to contend with: ‘…exploiting the very limited communicative possibilities made available on tiny cellphone screens…’, according to the Cambridge Encyclopedia. In fact, texting and SMS (Short Message Service) messaging have led to a new, identifiable English in less than five years. Have a look at a few examples:

gmta: great minds think alike

swdyt: so what do you think?

b4: before

gr8: great

msg: message

and so the list goes on.

In fact, texting reminds us a little of the telegram, does it not!

The Author: Believe it or not, as a traditionalist, I still ‘compose’ messages in ‘proper’ English, to the extent that my teenage stepson does the same, but only to me. Probably afraid of the wicked stepmother…